Various types of ovens or food warming apparatus are used in a wide variety of applications, particularly in food preparing and distribution fields. Such apparatus may range from a completely closed oven to an open-front oven to a pass thru oven which is open at both its front and rear ends. For instance, in high volume restaurants or similar establishments, various menu items are precooked, and the precooked items are held in warming ovens to maintain the temperature of the items for serving to a customer shortly thereafter. An example is a common sandwich. The sandwich may include a meat component and a bread component, with the meat component being precooked and the bread component being pre-toasted, for instance. These precooked components are temporarily held in separate pans which are placed in ovens within which the temperatures of the components are maintained until the components are assembled and prepared as the final menu item for serving to the customer. The ovens sometimes are called staging cabinets or holding cabinets. They do not heat the precooked food components up to a given temperature, but they maintain or hold the prescribed precooked temperature of the components.
One of the problems in using food warming apparatus of the character described above is that the food pans which contain the food products in a food warming apparatus may become very hot to the touch of a worker. The food warming compartments of the warming apparatus also may be bounded by upper and/or lower heating surfaces. The food pans typically have only small lips to grasp for moving the pans into and out of the warming compartments, and workers can burn their hands or fingers simply by slipping off of the lip of the food pan even if they originally establish a good grip.
The present invention is directed to solving these problems and providing improvements in such food warming apparatus, particularly in providing a management system for manually manipulating the food pans without risking burns or associated problems.